Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals (top to bottom): 

• Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You by Donna Decker
• Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
• The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
• Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception, and Double Lives by Tina Alexis Allen
• The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
• Lottery by Patricia Wood
• Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

Only one of these books was sent to me by a publisher: Hiding Out by Tina Alexis Allen. The rest were purchased for a whopping quarter each in the little corner of my former library where used books are sold for 25 cents per inch, stacked. So . . . $1.50 for the 6 of them, which makes abandoning the bad ones soooo easy. Lottery is an extra copy. One of my favorite books of the past decade, I couldn't pass up the chance to have a copy to pass around (I can't bear to loan out my own precious copy).


Books finished since last Malarkey:

• Quackery by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen
• When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and Asha Bandele

I was so immersed in both of these books that I didn't even start reading any fiction for at least 4 or 5 days, last week. 

Posts since last Malarkey:

• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (book review)
• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich (book review)
• The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne (book review)
• Fiona Friday (cat photo)

Currently reading:

• A Christmas to Remember by Kleypas, Heath, Frampton, and Lorret 
• Spies in the Family by Eva Dillon 

I've read the first two stories in A Christmas to Remember and they're (not entirely clean) fluffy romance but I enjoyed them and am looking forward to the remaining two. The first story . . . I'm not sure I ever got a sense of the Christmas season at all, but I liked the predictability of the romance. Sometimes predictability is comforting.

Spies in the Family is a book I started while on vacation but abandoned because I could only handle one book at a time, while traveling. I didn't make it far, the first time, but I was enjoying it so I'm looking forward to this second attempt (only on p. 8, at this point).


In other news:

A bit of trivial info about Lottery, for you. I normally don't remember character names unless a book has a huge impact on me, and it's been . . . oh, maybe 10 years? . . . since I read Lottery. I decided to test myself and managed to spit out 3 character names - Perry, Keith, and "a grandmother, but I can't remember what they called her." Sure enough, Perry was the main character, the grandmother was called Gram, and Keith was Perry's friend. I had to flip through the book to make sure, but the fact that I remember not one but 3 characters shows you just how much that book means to me.

I'm going to try to wrap up my final reviews, this week, and then go ahead and start my holiday break on Saturday. That means today's Monday Malarkey will be the last one for a few weeks. However, I'll keep writing posts until I'm completely caught up. I need to post about my October and November reads, as well. So much to do. I'll let you know when I'm caught up and ready to leave for my Christmas break. Happy Monday!

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